OpenArt

25Rainmaker

Miler Lagos’ sculptural works and interventions invite the viewer to reconsider an object’s material properties. By rendering paper, sculpting foam, and re-purposing materials like rubber and Formica, Lagos produces objects which appear to be made of solid wood or cast bronze. While his works initially seem to be revisiting disputes between the original and its copy, his choices of material or subject matter often engage with local environmental or specific political concerns.

Miler Lagos is attuned to the world around him, creating sculptures and projects that consider the forms and materials of our shared environment. He uses books, newspapers, plants, photography and video in sensitive and smart projects that balance themes of nature and culture. Lagos’ work often represents the way these two ideas are co-dependently entangled. Miler Lagos uses materials that were created for something other than artwork, which often results in double takes.

Sculptures that seem like tree trunks are actually made from masses of newspaper. It is only at the sawed off edges where viewers realize that these assemblages are elegant simulacra. His origami-like wall hangings also undercut assumptions, folding or layering newspaper into massive circles that recall cross sections of trees where we should read growth rings but instead see the numbers and letters that inundate our daily information-driven lives. Lagos’ body of work, and its disruption of expectations, offers striking commentary about our world today – how nature reacts to culture, how we receive and transmit information, and how we learn how to read and understand images.

“Rainmaker” The propuse for this site specific project, that will be presented in the OpenArt 2017, consist in an interactive installation over the Black River in Orebro´s downtown. With 5 meters of diameter, it will be a rolling Ring made of Wood and connected to the river bank by a dock. Inside this Wheel, people can produce rain while they are walking. This kind of mill use the human energy to make rolling the system in order to move the water and take part of it to be dropped from the top. Water has been the life-giving element, its presence is vital for the nature dynamic, and also for the human being life, we all depend of this element.

My work is inspired by the strong relationship between Culture and Nature, in addition to the different interactions of art in this circle. The resources and their explotation have been done in only one direction,that is why that relation got out of balance. Because of OpenArt is scheduled in summer, during drought time in the region, it wont be posible to use the river´s water stream to produce movement. Rain makers are looking to inverse the logic of the regular of the water movement by using the participants´energy to produce Rain.